With a heavy heart I must announce the passing of the gifted and famous artist, Don Wallworth, on August 5, 2006 followed on August 25 by his loving and loyal wife, Norma.

I'm sorry to say that I can't offer many details of his life except that he started his railroad career as a Delaware, Lackawana, & Western towerman, and ended it as a Conrail trainmaster. As an artist he was self taught, and produced a number of book and magazine covers as well as private commissions of mostly railroad subjects. For his own pleasure he modeled, photographed and painted the railroads of Mexico because he considered them to be the most colorful and interesting in North America. Of course it will be impossible ever to replace his friendship, and there will never be another like him on this earth. Permit me to share a little Don Wallworth story:

Late in 2005 I got a very nice print in the mail from Don, titled Dos Tecates, showing the nose of an FCP ALCO FA-2 parked in a siding on a hot day, next to a bar with the name La Sonorense painted on it. Immediately I wrote him back, saying that the painting made me smell fried insulation and boiled lube oil, and that I could just hear the alarm bells ringing and long hood doors flapping in the wind on the trailing unit, a Genaral Electric product. The point of the painting, I was sure, was that the ALCO had pulled the failed GE and their train into the clear conveniently next to a bar on a hot day. A couple weeks after that, a Christmas card came from Don, with a smaller version of the same painting. Inside was a separate enclosure, a small print of the inside of this bar showing the bartender serving a cold Tecate, with the following typed at the top --- "The title of this year's painting is the answer to the question asked of me on entering the Sonorense Cantina." The bottom of the print had been neatly folded up so that the signature didn't show, and when I opened it there was a caption penciled in the lower margin: "Watchu Want Meester" That was the last time I ever heard from him, and it was his best work ever.